chicken + roasted potatoes + creamy, bacon-y kale

a crowd-pleasing, classic chicken dinner seems like a good place to begin again

Hello hello hello. Today I’m sharing Othertongue’s first official recipe! It’s a chicken and potatoes dish for people who are skeptical about kale but want to eat more greens. We do this with a bit of bacon, naturally. To skip to details about the recipe and get the PDF, scroll directly to the bottom.

But first, to those who are new here: Welcome! It’s fun to see so many new digital “faces” rolling in. Please introduce yourself either in the comments or by responding to this email—I’d love to hear what you’re excited to see more of here: recipes? book reviews? personal essays? recommendations? Generally this newsletter will cover a mix of all four, but as a service-oriented journalist, I am always open to tailoring to requests.

☎️ 🍽️ The Recipe Hotline is live! 🆘🚨

I am loving reading the responses to my subscriber survey. It looks like most of you are excited about the new Recipe Hotline feature. Yes! Add your requests to this note (or in the comments section here).

There are a few secrets of adulthood that take some time to learn. Chief among these is “never say never,” a lesson I seem to learn anew on an annual basis. See, I was pretty burnt out after writing two cookbooks in three years, and when Help Yourself came out, I swore of recipe developing. I’m done! I said. Hanging up my apron! Goodbye grease-spattered print outs with hastily scribbled notes. Goodbye expense-able groceries. Trading those for the freedom to cook what I wanted when I wanted without needing to write anything down or cook the same dish again and again and again were necessary changes for me. Of course, I can see now that what I perceived as a definitive shift was instead a reprieve.

It wasn’t until sometime last summer, embroiled in my dissertation and finding myself yearning to do something with my hands other than annotate sociology articles and typetypetype that I realized I actually wanted to cook again. I started simply, making food that sounded good, not straying too far from my annoying obsession with practicality. I’ll never be the developer who provides special occasion recipes. And after 15 years, I’m okay with that. On the other hand, if you want a delicious, doable weeknight dinner that doesn’t use too many ingredients? I’m your gal.

The chicken recipe below is a perfect example of this genre (only 10 ingredients including staples like salt, pepper, olive oil, and lemon), and next week’s broccoli sauce pasta with mushrooms and peas is another. There will be other types recipes landing in your inbox weekly, though, like a breakfast cake that made workday mornings so much easier for my husband and me and a pancake recipe I swear tastes just as good made a day before you plan to eat them.

Next week’s work-in-progress broccoli sauce pasta recipe

Today’s recipe grew out of a desire to a crowd-pleasing dinner that my in laws—devoted kale skeptics—might actually enjoy. Of course, if you love kale (raises hand), then I think you’ll like this, too. It’s worth taking the time to roast the potatoes separately so they’re properly crispy (perfect for dunking in the creamy sauce). If that sounds like too much work, just skip them. This is about making dinner feel possible, not like a chore.

🍗 🥓 6 tips for success 🥘

• Using a large, rimmed baking sheet allows for tidier seasoning of the chicken thighs. Then, after you’re finished searing, you can place them back on the same sheet while wilting the kale, since they’ll be fully cooked in the oven and any raw juices will be killed off. While you could technically just cook the thighs in the oven without searing the skin first, this helps them get the perfectly golden, crispy skin we’re looking for.

• For crispy, low-maintenance potatoes, take the time to arrange them cut-side down on the baking sheet, with about 2 inches between each chunk. Don’t turn them during baking to get an epically crisped side with fluffy, tender interiors.

  

• Just two pieces of thick-cut bacon infuses the kale with smoky flavor without overpowering the dish with richness. If you want to skip it, no problem, just add 1 tablespoon olive oil to the pan before searing the chicken thighs. After the bacon is cooked, use kitchen shears to easily snip them into small pieces.

• For prettier shallots, slice them from stem to tip.

  

  Cutting from stem (right side) to tip (left side) creates prettier shallot slices

• The heavy cream is *technically* optional, but it creates a delicious pan sauce without much effort.

• Yes this is a lot of kale! It wilts as you add it to the pan. Use your hands to tear the leaves into smaller pieces to make the process go faster. You can use lacinato, but we’re going for volume here, and curly kale is faster to prep and generally less expensive.

» Find the recipe after the break, plus a downloadable PDF «

Chicken Thighs and Roasted Potatoes with Creamy Kale, Bacon, and Shallots